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Public Health Meaningful Use

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 specifies three main components of Meaningful Use:

The use of a certified Electronic Health Record (EHR) in a meaningful manner, such as e-prescribing.

The use of certified EHR technology for electronic exchange of health information to improve quality of health care.

The use of certified EHR technology to submit clinical quality and other measures.

Simply put, “meaningful use” means providers need to show they’re using certified EHR technology in ways that can be measured significantly in quality and in quantity.

To qualify for incentive payments, meaningful use requirements must be met in the following ways:

Medicare EHR Incentive Program – Eligible professionals, eligible hospitals, and critical access hospitals (CAHs) must successfully demonstrate meaningful use of certified electronic health record technology every year they participate in the program.

Medicaid EHR Incentive Program – Eligible professionals and eligible hospitals may qualify for incentive payments if they adopt, implement, upgrade or demonstrate meaningful use in their first year of participation. They must successfully demonstrate meaningful use for subsequent participation years.

Meaningful Use establishes a set of requirements that Eligible Professionals (EP) or Eligible Hospitals (EH) will need to meet in order to receive incentive funds. The requirements consist of both a core set and a menu set of objectives. The number of objectives for Meaningful Use in each set will vary depending on the organization’s eligibility status. For a complete list of the core and menu objectives and additional information regarding Meaningful Use Requirements, please visit:

Although providers are given the choice on which menu set options to achieve, one of the five must be specific to public health. The South Dakota Department of Health (DOH) will assist EPs and EHs with the public health objectives which include submitting electronic data to the DOH on immunizations and reportable lab results.

DOH will provide each facility after testing with a validation email for the public health measure.

Click on the appropriate link to learn more about public health reporting options:

Please continue to check this site for current DOH Meaningful Use testing requirements and instructions.

Registration of Intent

For Stage 2, eligible participants will be required to register their intent to submit data to the South Dakota Department of Health within 60 days of the start of their EHR data reporting period. If you are ready to start your reporting period and wish to register your intent to submit please fill out the Registration form. Please note you must first have purchased EHR technology that meets the ONC 2014 edition Certified EHR Technology (CEHRT) criteria.

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